A Sword from Red Ice (Book 3)

by J. V. Jones

  So why should I?

  Tugging her shawl across her shoulders, Raina crossed the short distance to the roundhouse. People walking in the opposite direction minded her then looked away. Some elbowed their companions and whispers were exchanged. She could guess what they were saying: “Why is she not attending Anwyn Bird’s death march and laying?”

  Because the man who murdered her will lead the ceremony. And if I were forced to watch it there would be no telling what I would do.

  Perhaps some of this answer was showing in her face, for clan maids and children seemed afraid of her and were quick to step out of her way. Raina felt an odd and bitter smile come to her face and she let it stay there as she made her way through the roundhouse.

  Anwyn Bird’s throat had been slit so deeply that the bone at the back of her neck had been exposed. Laida Moon had told Raina that the clan matron would have died instantly. Was that statement supposed to bring comfort? Sheela Cobbin, one of the bakers, had found her. Anwyn’s absence had been noted for several hours but no one was too concerned—the clan matron had other responsibilities beside running the kitchens—and it wasn’t until it was time to prepare the pork legs for supper that people began to wonder where she was. Anwyn was known to be fussy about pork and she had left no instructions regarding its preparation. One of the cooks thought they should parboil the legs to speed cooking. Another said you shouldn’t parboil a leg that had been brined—it’d boil out all the taste. A heated argument erupted and Sheela Cobbin, who had been listening with growing impatience by the bread ovens, said they could both stop their hollering as she was off to fetch Anwyn Bird.

  Everyone in the kitchen heard her scream two minutes later. Anwyn was found slumped by the little box pallet she used as a bed in her cell beneath the kitchen. There was so much blood it had seeped through the blanket, sheets and mattress and onto the rush matting that covered the stone floor. The last anyone had seen or heard of her was when she was seen heading down the stairs from the widows’ wall and stopped to tell Gat Murdock that she’d meet him in the stillroom in a quarter to discuss the latest malt they were aiming to distill. Apparently Gat Murdock had gone to the stillroom, grown impatient with being kept waiting, taken more than a few tipples of the low wines, and then wandered off to dice with the old-timers in the greathearth. In fairness he was in a terrible state about it later, telling anyone who listened that Anwyn was the finest girl in the clan and that he’d give up his one remaining arm to have her back.

  Raina had expected to feel sorry for him. But didn’t.

  Something had happened to her when she caught sight of the body and now she was something other instead. She could look back and recall the old Raina and know exactly how she would feel and act in any given situation, but she could no longer feel and act that way herself. The old Raina had gone the way of the gods. And the new one didn’t even know if she was sane.

  Orwin Shank had been the first to perceive the change in her. He had held her in a mighty bear hug and rocked her back and forth as they stood in Anwyn’s cell. “It’s all right, my sweet lamb,” he kept repeating softly. Quite suddenly she could not stand the raw-beef smell of blood.

  “Unhand me,” she had said.

  Orwin had paused, surprised. Deciding that her tone was a symptom of grief he had continued rocking her. She had raised a hand and slammed him hard in the ribs.

  “I said unhand me.”

  He had released her immediately and she left the room.

  It was the strangest night she could ever recall spending in Blackhail’s roundhouse. Dagro’s death had not caused the disruption that Anwyn’s did. The shattering of the Hailstone had not left the clan as purposeless and bereft. She had always been the rallying point, the one who marched into the middle of a crisis, issued orders, served beer, put a lid on unnecessary fussing, made sure everyone was well fed. They had needed an Anwyn Bird or someone like her to cope with Anwyn’s death. Instead they had a chief’s wife who left them to their misery, a kitchen staff who would have roused themselves to make hot food and bring cool beer if anyone had thought to direct them, a chief who was afield at war, and a clan guide who had spent much of the evening locked up in the greathearth with the elder warriors.

  Raina had seen the great oaken doors barred by yearmen with crossed spears and had not cared enough to force entry. She understood that some manipulation was happening behind them and that she would learn soon enough its nature.

  Cowlmen was the word that came out of the greathearth later in that long night. Hailsmen were tense, their hands returning often to the hilts of their swords as they descended their stairs, their gazes flickering around the groups of people who had gathered in the entrance hall below them.

  Robbie Dun Dhoone had sent an assassin into the Hailhouse to spread terror and strike at the heart of clan. The Thorn King had surveyed the strength of the Hailish armies camped on Bannen Field and had judged them too great a threat to Dhoone’s reclaiming of Ganmiddich. He was a chief known to have no scruples—look how he had dealt with his rival and uncle Skinner Dhoone—and now he had employed the kind of vicious tactics you would expect from such a man. His plan was to cause sufficient terror to force Mace Blackhail into ordering half of his army home.

  “We should expect more strikes,” Stannig Beade had warned the sworn clansmen. “The death of our beloved Anwyn is just the start.”

  He had not addressed these words to the clan, and Raina had only heard them repeated secondhand later. Corbie Meese had given her a brief account of what had happened behind closed doors. “Raina,” he had said, his voice low and filled with strong emotion, “Stannig believes there may be a cowlman concealed in this house.”

  Raina had simply stared at him. How could it be possible that a good man like Corbie could believe such lies? Cowlmen? Did he not recall the last time there were rumors of cowlmen in the Hailhold, how they supposedly killed Shor Gormalin and then left never to be heard of again? How was it possible that both she and the hammerman had lived through that time and come out with two separate experiences of the truth?

  She had said one thing to him, because it was the only solid truth she possessed. “Skinner Dhoone was not Robbie’s uncle. Robbie was a Cormac who named himself Dhoone after he’d decided that if he looked far enough back into his mother’s lineage he would find her related to the Dhoone kings.”

  Corbie had looked at her strangely. “Stannig said it only as a figure of speech.”

  She bet he did. She damn well bet he did.

  Sworn clansmen had mounted a torch party that night, riding out from the Hailhouse with long flaming firebrands housed in their spear horns. Raina could not discern its purpose, beyond the need of decent men to take action against evil. Stannig Beade had ridden at the party’s head, and it appeared that no one else beside herself questioned whether this was fitting behavior for a guide.

  The woman with the greatest respect in the clan was dead. He was guide. Didn’t he have to grind some bones?

  Two days later, whilst Laida Moon and Merritt Ganlow were preparing Anwyn’s body with milk of mercury, two Scarpemen had found Jani Gaylo dead. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear and her body had been dumped down the old wellshaft in the kaleyard. It was frozen solid.

  If there had been any doubt in Raina’s mind, that cleared it up. Stannig Beade had murdered both women. Anwyn Bird had been a threat to him. Her status in the clan was high and she wielded her influence with subtlety, and the day she had decided to take overt action against him was the day she’d ended up dead. “Stannig Beade is no clan guide and must be shown as such. We are many. We can send him back to Scarpe.” Those were close to Anwyn’s last words, doubtless repeated imperfectly by pretty little Jani Gaylo not much longer after they were originally spoken.

  Poor, silly girl. She had probably not been much older than seventeen. Too young to be killed for telling tales.

  As there were only two people in the roundhouse who understood the relationship
between Anwyn and Jani, the maid’s death was taken as further evidence of cowlmen. The girl had been tilling the onion beds in the kaleyard, the story went, when she had been jumped from behind by her assassin. He was growing bolder now, people whispered. It was the closest thing to the truth that had been said.

  Stannig Beade was growing bold. So where did that leave Raina Blackhail? Three people had been in the widows’ wall that day. Two were dead. Sworn clansmen were distracted and tense: a whisper could make them draw a sword. For the first time Raina could remember, the clandoor was shut to tied clansmen. Those who were already within the house were permitted to remain under its protection, but those farmers, miners, loggers, trappers, dairymen, tradesmen, cotters, charcoal-burners, weavers, tanners and millers who applied at the door for safekeeping—as was their right as men and women making their living within the Hailhold—were turned away.

  Dagro Blackhail would no longer have recognized his clan.

  Or his wife.

  Raina stood for a moment at the foot of the great stone staircase and wondered what to do with herself. The Hailhouse was half empty now. Anwyn Bird’s funeral rites had pulled hundreds away. Her absence could be felt in dozens of large and small ways. Smoke-blackened cobwebs were collecting in the corners of the hall. The scant torches that were lit had been improperly dried and dipped and were giving off more smolder than light. A sour and greasy smell was wafting from the kitchen; the hearths had not been raked in days. The list could go on, but Raina no longer saw the point of cataloguing the decline in Blackhail’s house. Who was left to mind it? Anwyn was no longer here to stand stubbornly against the chaos. Merritt Ganlow might have a go, but she was all sharp edges and would rub people the wrong way. Anwyn Bird had been a block.

  Oh gods, Anny. Raina breathed in the smoky air and felt the tar settle in her lungs. A Scarpeman sitting above her on one of the steps was taking a breakfast of headcheese and rye bread. He had a chunk of brain-and-tongue loaf and was chipping off pieces with his handknife and popping them in his mouth. His eyes had the yellowish tint of many Scarpes. Chewing and swallowing he watched Raina, daring her to move him. Six days ago when Anwyn was alive he would not have been allowed to block the way to the greathearth, let alone eat on the stairs. The old Raina would have been incensed, but would not have risked the potential humiliation that might occur if she made an aggressive move toward a man. The new Raina didn’t care either way. If she’d had the will to stop him she would have marched up the stairs and snatched the headcheese right from his hand and slapped it into his face.

  The old Raina had worried too much about what people thought of her. She had wanted to be liked as well as respected. Her mistake was in believing that if she worked hard enough at being a good chief’s wife she would eventually make a good chief.

  Chief’s wife was not the same as chief. That fact was so clear to the new Raina she wondered how it was possible she could ever have believed anything else. The evidence was there—look at Mace Blackhail, Robbie Dun Dhoone, and the Dog Lord. You didn’t rule a roundhouse by being nice. The Stone Gods were gods of war. Not gods of hearth and home.

  The old Raina had supported the clan, but never once thought to lead it. I will be chief. The words could have been spoken by a child, so little understanding lay behind them. Anwyn had tried to push her; once that day on the balcony as they’d watched the Scarpestone roll in from Scarpe, and once in the widows’ wall on the day that Anwyn had died. And she, Raina Blackhail, had not allowed herself to be pushed.

  Always cautious. Always wary of her standing in the clan.

  Her caution had killed Anwyn Bird. I will be lessened, she had cried when Anwyn had tried to force her into speaking up against Stannig Beade. She must have had a hole in her head.

  There were no holes there now, but she was not sure what she was left with. She remembered going to see Laida Moon in the sickroom while the healer was preparing Anwyn’s corpse. Laida had been holding a glass tube full of mercury in her fist. The metal pooled and roiled as they spoke, forming shiny beads that rolled from one end of the flask to the other. When Laida set it down to fetch a jug of water, it had taken less than ten seconds for the metal to harden into a dull lump. The room had to be cold, Laida had explained to Raina later, so the body would not soften and corrupt. The mercury existed in an uncertain state between liquid and solid, and the difference in temperature between her hand and the cold air was sufficient to flash between them.

  That was how Raina felt, standing by the foot of the staircase: in an uncertain form between two states. Liable to soften into hysterics one moment and harden into anger and contempt the next.

  She had not slept through the night in six days. How could she? Every floorboard creaking in the night might be Stannig Beade come to kill her. She was the only one left who knew what he was. The only one in the clan who understood how very little Blackhail’s guide cared about the gods.

  For six nights she had slept in the widows’ wall with Merritt Ganlow, Hatty Hare, Biddie Byce and a half-dozen other widows who had come together to reestablish the hearth after the Scarpes had left. Safety in numbers, Raina supposed. Yet she did not feel safe. And she barely slept.

  When you do not sleep eventually you do not eat. Appetite had left her and she could not recall the last time she had eaten a proper meal. Yesterday morning she had taken a little milk in honey offered to her by young Biddie Byce. Biddie was a quiet and gentle girl, yet quite capable of perceiving the changes in the chief’s wife. She was afraid of what it meant to herself and her clan, Raina realized as their fingertips had touched over the milk cup.

  She had reason to be.

  Uncertain what to do, Raina left the entry hall and headed for the kitchens. As she passed the doorway leading to the east hall, her maiden’s helper stirred against her hip. Ignoring it she entered the cavernous space of the main kitchen. Not much was being done. Two Scarpewomen were skinning a freshly trapped rabbit on the kneading table. The older woman had pinned its skull to the wood with her knife while the younger one flensed the legs. Blood was soaking into the highly polished hickory surface. Poor Anwyn. Six days dead and Scarpes were not only using her kitchen, they were bloodying her bread table.

  Borrie Sweed, the broom boy, was sweeping spilled flour halfheartedly across the floor. He looked up when Raina entered, his expression hopeful, but she passed him by without greeting. She had an idea that she might simply sleep. Stannig Beade would be gone for several hours. Anwyn’s laying would take time and he would not dare dishonor her memory by returning from the Wedge ahorse. No. He would have to walk with the rest of them. Anything less would be unseemly. That would give her two or three hours where she could be sure she was safe. But where to go?

  The widows’ wall would be too empty and exposed. The greathearth was open to sworn Scarpemen. Anywhere aboveground seemed unsafe. She would go to the underlevels, rest in the peace and darkness beneath the Hailhouse, and see if she could regain her mind. It wasn’t much, but at least it was a decision. And it would stop her having to think about what was happening to Anwyn’s corpse.

  Carefully avoiding the area where Anwyn’s cell had been located, Raina grabbed a safelamp and worked her way downstairs. She smelled dead mice and ripe mud. The air was thick with gases that were not easy to breathe. The lower she went the wetter the stone underfoot became, and the deeper the silence. It was soothing to be in a place so quiet and dark, where she could be sure to meet nothing except mice and cellar rats. She felt the weight of her exhaustion pressing against her shoulders and kneecaps. She could tell from the trembling of the light that she must be shaking. Perhaps she should have brought a blanket, for it was icily cold, and she had nothing except her mohair shawl to keep out the chill. Longhead had once told her that the farther you went underground the warmer it became. She would go deep then, perhaps even as far as the secret room where she had hidden the last remaining chunk of Hailstone.

  Yes, she would go there. It would be still and saf
e, and the few belongings of Dagro’s that she had kept for her own were there as well. To touch them would be good.

  The journey was much easier this time as she had no sixty-pound weight on her back. Within hardly any time at all she found herself crouching in the low-ceilinged foundation space. It was a short journey then, past support columns, drain walls, sealed wellheads and ancient dungeons to the T-junction where she needed to turn.

  The standing water was a foot deep here and Raina hiked up her skirts and grimaced as cool, gelid liquid flooded over the tops of her boots. Luckily, Yarro Blackhail’s strongroom had been built a half-level higher than the corridor, and when she slid back the stone tile that concealed the entrance she was pleased to see dry ground below her. Feeling a spike of girlish energy, she vaulted through the opening.

  The Hailstone stood here. She could feel its presence straightaway. The gods no longer lived there and the small chunk of granite retained no power, but some residue remained. It charged the space in the strongroom, lightly, almost imperceptibly pulsing the air. Raina looked, but did not approach it. It stood in the corner, a dull stone placed against a wall of dull stone. No dust had settled upon it and no spider had dared use it to anchor a web. The old Raina had had some jaw, she realized. To steal the stone: that took balls.

  Quite suddenly she was too tired to think. Pulling off her boots, she glanced about for a place to sleep. Yarro Blackhail had built his small square strongroom to house treasure, not people, and beside the single market crate which she had brought here herself many months earlier there was nothing to interrupt the hardness of the stone floor. At least it was dry.

  Raina lay down, bundled her shawl into a pillow, and fell into an exhausted asleep.